The High Museum of Art is pleased to announce an important gift of 47 artworks from collector, scholar and advocate Gordon W. Bailey. This is Bailey’s third substantial gift to the High and underscores his commitment to helping build the Museum’s collection, which is recognized as one of the world’s most significant public repositories of work by American self-taught artists. Since 2010, Bailey has donated more than 80 works of art to the High, including masterworks by Sam Doyle and Josephus Farmer. This gift adds particular strength to the Museum’s holdings of American contemporary art and works by African American and Southern artists.

Comprising paintings, sculpture and works on paper, Bailey’s 2016 gift features such renowned artists as Leroy Almon, Burlon Craig, Arthur Dial, Thornton Dial, Jr., Roy Ferdinand, Howard Finster, Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Elijah Pierce, Herbert Singleton and Purvis Young. All of the artists represented in the gift are Southern and self-taught and the majority are African American.

The High will celebrate the gift with an exhibition opening this spring titled “A Cut Above: Wood Sculpture from the Gordon W. Bailey Collection” (May 14 through Oct. 30, 2016). “The High was among the first museums in the nation to make an institutional commitment to Southern self-taught artists,” said Rand Suffolk, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director.
“Without question, Mr. Bailey’s gift builds strength on strength, adds emphasis to our commitment to inclusivity and further enhances the High’s embrace of important and underrepresented artists.”

Katherine Jentleson, the High’s Merrie and Dan Boone curator of folk and self-taught art, said, “I am so grateful to Mr. Bailey for his prodigious commitment to fostering the appreciation of some of the most important but marginalized artists of the past century. His generous gift pushes the High’s collection to a new tier, both in quality and quantity. It also makes possible exhibitions like ‘A Cut Above,’ which will give our audiences an unprecedented opportunity to consider how self-taught artists respond to a varied material like wood, creating majestic works of art that range from relief carving to root sculpture.”

“A Cut Above” will feature more than 25 wood carvings and constructions drawn from the artworks Bailey has donated to the High over the past six years. The exhibition will place particular focus on Almon, a Georgia artist whose carving tools and teaching tablets—on view alongside his wood bas reliefs—give intimate insight into his process. Other key works featured in the exhibition will include Pierce’s reverent tribute to Henry “Hank” Aaron and his wife, Billye. Pierce created the carved wood portrait in 1974 to honor Aaron on the occasion of his historic 715th home run, which eclipsed Babe Ruth’s longstanding record. Expressive life-size animals carved by O. L. Samuels and Raymond Coins and superb works created by Charles Butler, Ralph Griffin, James Harold Jennings, W. C. Owens and Sulton Rogers will also be on view.

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